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As important as it is to be able to find lots of information quickly, what's even more important is to be able to think deeply about the information once we've found it. We need to slow down.

Indeed, a variety of players – including state security agencies to Internet marketers to organized-crime circles – are creating an online world in which the very concept of anonymity has basically vanished.

“People at first thought anonymity was very simple,” he says. “It's the complete opposite: The Internet is a great tool for spying.”

“We're not working with any individual consumer information,” Mr. Green says. “In fact, we don't want it.” Instead, Generation5 says it focuses on balancing anonymity with consumer targeting.

Principles of networked learning, constructivism, and connectivism inform the design of a test case through which secondary students construct personal learning environments for the purpose of independent inquiry.

While a lot of this activity comes directly from demands of one's employer, Toronto-based life coach Joshua Zuchter said much of it is also a matter of personal choice.

robbing kids of their ability to concentrate

The question, though, is: distraction from what? And also: What’s inherently wrong with distraction?

Formal education, as we’ve framed it, is not only about finding ways to learn more about the things we love, but also, equally, about squelching our aversion to the things we don’t — all in the ecumenical spirit of generalized knowledge.

What are we doing as educators to meaningfully engage our students, to give them the autonomy, purpose, and opportunity for mastery which they crave and to which they respond with focus, energy, enthusiasm, and diligence?

Do we think that before technology, most students avoided distraction?

Yes, of course, students can and do get distracted when their computers and smartphones are open on their desk or lap, and teachers need to respond thoughtfully to this problem.    It is fine for teachers to ask students to put them away in certain times.    William Stites has a terrific post about how schools can confront and manage the technological distraction issues

how new media literacies can be cultivated in students, faculty and staff in ways that deepen our understanding of the world, the university and the community of education in which we live.

The fundamental shift that Sir Ken is talking about is more similar to discovery based education. Just like google which allows its employees to use 20% of their time to pursue any pet project, I think the education system should have 20% time free time for kids to to pursue any idea or vision or dream maybe within school or outside the school. This is one way to balance the rigid structure of the current learning against total flexible system where its easy for kids to be lost without learning some valuable knowledge. So the main question is should we allow 20-25% of time as free time to pursue their dream ? I think it is yes

Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

“Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing,”

Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it.